September 30, 2007

Jenny has brought biomedical autism treatment to the forefront of the country's mind, and my blog stats are through the roof, so for all those parents and friends that are new to the world of autism treatment, I wanted to point you in TACA's direction.

Talk About Curing Autism, the group that Jenny McCarthy represents, has a get started guide that my husband and I wish had existed when we started out on this journey three years ago. It covers all the bases.

It is a great one stop for what you need to know to get your child the help they need. If you are the friend or family member of someone with a child with autism, get one for them and one for yourself. They will need lots of help in the journey, and you can't claim that you really love them if you don't shoulder their burden.

September 26, 2007

They didn't even include autistic children in this study. How much you wanna bet that dispite this fact, we will be reading media headlines that say, "new CDC study proves that vaccines not linked to autism".

Exclusion of low birth weight babies, 70% participant drop out rate, focusing on blood mercury levels and ignoring brain mercury, conclusions not backed up by the data, conflicts of interests with all the researchers and on and on...

It is like a greatest hits of all the bad research done in the last decade wrapped up in one convenient package.

On September 27, 2007 the New England Journal of Medicine will publish a study entitled, "Early Thimerosal Exposure and Neuropsychological Outcomes at 7 to 10 Years." For more than two years we at A-CHAMP have been hearing rumors of a new study that "exonerates" thimerosal, despite the fact that the study results were supposed to be kept strictly confidential.

Now the rumors have been turned into hype - another government funded study that tries to spin data and clear thimerosal of any suspicion of causing neurodevelopmental disorders. The study authors claim in their "Conclusions" that "[o]ur study does not support a causal association between early exposure to mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines and immune globulins and neuropsychological functioning at the age of 7 to 10 years."

The statement is plainly false. The study's conclusions do not reflect the study's data or the limitations of the study,

Unfortunately we have come to expect misleading statements – some might say fraudulent statements – from studies emanating from the CDC and their associates. It is not merely the fact that the authors of the study are burdened by large conflicts of interests - almost all of the 18 study authors have worked for vaccine manufacturers, received money from them, or performed research on their behalf. What is truly shocking about this study is that it does, indeed, find significant associations between thimerosal-containing vaccines and tics, speech, executive functioning and attention, but irresponsibly dismisses the associations. The study did not even look at children with autism – that is the subject of another uncompleted study – and children who might be more vulnerable to mercury, like low birth weight babies and children from families with lower incomes, were excluded or under-represented in the study sample

Fortunately, an advocate from our own community was an external consultant to the study, participated in its development from the outset, and is intimately familiar with the data and methodology. She has dissented from the study's conclusions. In addition, our colleagues and fellow parents at SafeMinds will be issuing a critique of the study in the near future. We are also told that the study data will be made publicly available so that independent researchers may examine it and draw their own conclusions.

Although detailed analysis of the study is beyond the scope of this letter, below are some key points that cause us to distrust this study as another attempt to manipulate the scientific and public debate on thimerosal to the detriment of the health and safety of America's children:

1. The Study's Claim of No Causality is Contrary to the Study's Data

The study authors claim that the data disproves causality when in fact, several findings show a negative effect on neuropsychological functioning warranting more study. At least one such adverse association was also found to be associated with low dose thimerosal exposure in other studies. As with earlier studies hyped by vaccine promoters, the study is unable to prove or disprove causality. The blanket dismissal of the troubling neuropsychological outcomes in this study is disingenuous and misleading.

2. Children with autism were excluded from this study

The early media contacts we have received suggest that this study shows no association between thimerosal and autism. In fact, the study specifically did not look at children with autism as the sample size was too small and the testing is impossible to complete for the typical child with autism. The exclusion of children with autism from the study may have undermined the power of the study to draw any conclusions about thimerosal.

The study authors falsely claim that research by Burbacher et al. at the University of Washington (distribution of thimerosal as compared with methylmercury in infant monkeys) shows that ethylmercury is safer than methylmercury. But the authors focus only on the blood "half-life", ignoring data, showing twice as much inorganic mercury trapped in the brains of monkeys than from same dose of methylmercury.

Major flaws that that causes a large underestimation of neurological adverse effects burden the study: 70% of the families recruited for the study failed to participate. This kind of bias in epidemiological studies is well known to distort even large studies of health effects. (See , for example, NY Times Magazine, "Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy" by Gary Taubes 9/16/07). It is well established that people who choose to participate in this kind of study are probably very different than those who refuse to participate (the "healthy person" or "complier" effect); especially when the ones who refused to participate said they were too busy.

Simply put: if you have a kid with ADHD or mild ASD or other neurodevelopmental disorders, you are likely to be busier, more stressed, and less available than the mother of a healthy normal child. This phenomenon serves to amplify the effect of the "complier", the "healthy families," - those who do cooperate with the study - confounding or confusing the study's results. The cooperative parents included in the study were more likely to be those with relatively trouble-free kids

5.Major Conflicts of Interest Burden Almost Every One of the 18 Study Authors

Many of the study authors have either worked for or received money from vaccine manufacturers. Others are employed by the CDC, which has been criticized by an IOM committee for its inherent conflict of interest in promoting vaccines while simultaneously monitoring safety. Many of the remaining study authors have conducted studies for vaccine manufacturers. The conflicts of interest cast doubt on the validity of the study, especially of the clearly biased final conclusions.

6. The High & Low Thimerosal Exposure Groups Too Small to Draw Conclusions

In addition to the number of children of the study being too small to draw statistically significant conclusions, the numbers of children in the high exposure group and the low exposure group were far too small to draw conclusions. Yet the study ignored this limitation and drew sweeping conclusions of no causality.

7.Vulnerable Children Were Excluded from the Study; Early Intervention Was Ignored

Children with a birth weight under 5 lbs. 8 oz. were excluded from the study further skewing the results, as these children are likely more vulnerable to thimerosal than larger babies. In addition, the fact that early intervention may have reduced deficits such as speech delay detected by neuropsychological testing of children aged 7-10 was not accounted for in the study results. There also was no analysis of combined prenatal and postnatal mercury exposures. Only 103 mothers who were exposed to mercury from prenatal immune globulins participated in the study, far too small a group for researchers to draw conclusions regarding the safety of thimerosal in these products.

8. The Study Fails to Account for the Subset of Children with "Efflux Disorder"

Only approximately 1000 children participated in the study, out of more than 3000 that were recruited. In addition to the "complier" bias discussed above, the study sample size is too small to accurately estimate the adverse effect of Thimerosal on the subset of the population who have a problem in mobilizing and excreting mercury. While the study's author's focus on the average time it takes for mercury to clear from the blood, itself misrepresented, we know that in 15% of the population this average is greatly exceeded. It is these children who are vulnerable to the effects of mercury from thimerosal. This study fails to account for the effect of mercury from vaccines on this subset of children.

These are but a few of the serious problems with the study and the way the data have been presented. We look forward to the forthcoming SAFEMINDS critique of the study and thank them for their continued close monitoring and analysis of the scientific research that affects our children.

In the meantime, if you see headlines stating that "Vaccines Cleared in New Study" or "New Study Finds Thimerosal Safe" know that we are all again being played, and that those who we should be able to trust are compromising the truth and the health of our children.

September 25, 2007

The Rescue Post is calling your attention again to the first study of vaccinated v. unvaccinated children and their risk for disorders like Autism, ADHD, Asthma and the like. The study was released in June and ignored by the mainstream media.

Those of you who are here because you saw Jenny MCCarthy, our new autism spokes mom, on the tele should take a look at the survey.

If you vaccinated your son, they have a %155 higher chance of having a neurological disorder had you chosen not to vaccinate.

The question that we have been screaming at the CDC for years, and they will not answer, is this:

Are we trading curable communicable diseases for incurable neurological diseases by over vaccinating our children, and by not screening to see which children cannot tolerate vaccination.

September 20, 2007

I have been away from blogging for the last two months because we spent the summer focusing on getting our boy better. And hell yeah is he better!

After a break from chelation of more than a year, we tested him to find that his lead levels were through the roof. Our DAN doc was alarmed and he recommended that we go straight to IV Calcium EDTA chelation (CaEDTA).

Previously, I had wanted to remain cautious and used the much slower method of oral DMSA, but seeing the results that Chandler had from just 10 sessions this summer, I could not regret my decision more. I wish I had done this for him three years ago.

(So much has been made of the accidental death of the autistic child in PA who was mistakenly given the wrong form of the drug, Na2EDTA, while undergoing chelation for lead, and I wanted to take a moment to link to the CDC’s review of three chelation deaths. These tragedies were medical accidents and not the result of the administration of CaEDTA which is the standard and safe treatment for children with lead poisoning.)

His results have been wonderful. Cautioning, he is still autistic, but his speech is really starting to flow, his eye contact has shot up, he is connecting with the kids in the neighborhood, he is beginning to make little jokes, and get my little jokes, and – miracle of miracles – hold on to your butt – HE IS POTTY TRAINING!!!

The change in him over the first five sessions were the most dramatic. Our neighbors, whom we have been close friends with since before the kids were born, and whose kids play with our kids practically daily, went away for two weeks at the beginning of his IV chelation. We had not told them what we were doing. When they came back, their family was outside with my husband and Chandler. After about 20 minutes I came out and the mom said to me, “What is up with Chandler, he is acting like a different kid?” I told her about the chelation and she said that it was like we had adopted a new child.

His lead levels are still rising, and he still has mercury tucked in there behind the lead (chelators bind to lead first and you have to clear it before you can get the mercury out adequately), so we will be doing this for a while. After a month long break, we will be starting up again and I will give more frequent updates on his progress.

But for now, I wanted to share with everyone our wonderful news of our beautiful boy’s progress.

Thank you to all of the encouragement that so many have given us over the years.

September 19, 2007

(Update 2009 - This has become a very popular blog post, especially for those who are looking for information on just what Jenny McCarthy is talking about when she writes about vaccine injury and autism treatment. Much disinformation is out there on what she is 'preaching'.

No she is not advocating the abandonment of vaccination, but a reexamination and easing off of the overly aggressive/untested CDC vaccine schedule, and stricter safety standards of individual vaccines. Currently the vaccine schedule has more than tripled since I was a child, as it has gone from 10 vaccines to 66 vaccines, and 36 alone in the first 18 months of life. There is no safety testing of the vaccine schedule as a whole, and public health agencies have refused to do any, despite parent protests. Safety standards are very poor and Pharma is asking for even regulatory standards to even be lowered for them.]

She is also advocating medical treatment for children with autism. No these are not HER treatments, they are emerging treatments that began to be put into use at least 15 years ago, and now are in use by most parents of young children with autism. (She is just the most well known and vociferous advocate of these medical interventions) For example, CDC now recommends that children with autism be screened for gastrointestinal damage. Treating this damage often improves the cognition and functioning of people with autism.

In short, in case after case that is properly medically investigated, doctors are finding that children with the behavioral diagnosis of "autism" have neuro immune disease. These kids have an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system has attacked the central nervous system. Onset is often directly following vaccination (or other environmental insults), and we know that vaccination causes autoimmune disorders (check the VCIP "vaccine encepalopathy" and individual vaccine package inserts for details). At issue is whether many cases of "autism" are in fact neuroimmune disease in a genetically vulnerable subset of the population, triggered by an over reaction of the immune system to the ingredients in the vaccine.

The testing that would prove or disprove this theory have never been done.

Further, most of these children have serious GI damage that causes malabsorption of nutrients, resulting in further damage to the brain and related systems.

Jenny McCarthy's book about autism treatment is a collaboration between Jenny, and a very well respected physician in the autism community, Dr. Jerry Kartzinel. "Healing and Preventing Autism: A Complete Guide" is a book in which Dr. Kartzinel discusses the treatments and McCarthy discusses her experience of the treatments.

For more information on environmental causation and treatments feel free to explore this site or contact me personally. My son has been on said treatments for five years and has responded very well.

Jenny's book with Dr. Kartzinel on autism treatment was directed at parents, but this could be considered the companion piece for physicians on the state of research into the treatments that are successful in recovering children from autism: Changing the Course of Autism. If you are serious about finding out why Jenny's message has resonated with so many parents, but don't think that she is a credible source of medical information, please read Dr. Jepson's book. This is the book that Martha Herbert of Harvard mentions in her speech at the Maine CDC autism conference.

A partial list of research for those who have come here under the assumption that the only evidence of the link between vaccines and autism is temporal correlation and who are tempted to comment and make the "correlation does not prove causation" arguement.

Thank you for visiting and enjoy the site.)

Jenny McCarthy on OprahBarbara Loe Fisher Commentary:

When she was not yet a superstar or even broadcasting nationally, in early 1985 a friend gave Oprah a copy of "DPT: A Shot in the Dark," which was the first report of an association between autism and vaccination. "We're waiting until it comes out in paperback," a producer told her friend. The paperback version was published in 1986 but, by then, Oprah had starred in "The Color Purple," her show had been nationally syndicated and the vaccine safety debate had become a heated controversy. Over the last two decades, many parents of vaccine injured children have written letters to Oprah in hopes that she would do a show about vaccine risks.

Yesterday, after 22 years, Oprah finally talked about vaccine injured children when she interviewed Hollywood Moms, Jenny McCarthy and Holly Peete. Jenny has written a book on her experience of watching her two and a half year old son regress into autism after an MMR shot.

On the show, Jenny talked about the increases in autism among children and asked what parents of vaccine injured children have been asking for a quarter century: "What number will it take for people just to start listening to what the mothers of children who have seen autism have been saying for years, which is, 'We vaccinated our baby and something happened."

Jenny says even before Evan received his vaccines, she tried to talk to her pediatrician about it. "Right before his MMR shot, I said to the doctor, "I have a very bad feeling about this shot. This is the autism shot, isn't it?' And he said, 'No, that is ridiculous. It is a mother's desperate attempt to blame something,' and he swore at me, and then the nurse gave [Evan] the shot," she says. "And I remember going, 'Oh, God, I hope he's right.' And soon thereafter-boom-the soul's gone from his eyes."

The CDC's prepared response to a query from the Oprah Show staff about whether there is a link between autism and vaccines was "CDC places a high priority on vaccine safety and the integrity and credibility of its vaccine safety research. This commitment not only stems from our scientific and medical dedication, it is also personal-for most of us who work at CDC are also parents and grandparents. And as such, we too, have high levels of personal interest and concern in the health and safety of children, families and communities. We simply don't know what causes most cases of autism, but we're doing everything we can to find out. The vast majority of science to date does not support an association between thimerosal in vaccines and autism. But we are currently conducting additional studies to further determine what role, if any, thimerosal in vaccines may play in the development of autism. It is important to remember, vaccines protect and save lives. Vaccines protect infants, children and adults from the unnecessary harm and premature death caused by vaccine-preventable diseases."

It is curious that the CDC would confine its response regarding the autism-vaccine connection to thimerosal, when MMR vaccine has been strongly associated with regressive autism and live virus MMR vaccine never contained thimerosal. The National Vaccine Information Center, which has operated a Vaccine Reaction Registry since 1982, continues to receive reports from parents describing how their children regressed after receiving live virus or non- mercury containing vaccines, often after being given 8 to 12 vaccines on one day. The most heart-breaking stories are when children are vaccinated over and over again despite deteriorating health because their pediatricians are in denial about vaccine risks.

Jenny McCarthy gave a star turn on Oprah when she clearly, simply and passionately described what happened to her son after vaccination and how she was empowered by information she found on the internet to find ways to cure his vaccine-associated regressive autism. She listened to her mother's instinct and pursued a course of treatment that involved nutrition and other alternative therapies. It is a story of a mother's love and determination to heal her son after he was given the diagnosis of autism, a neuroimmune disorder that so many pediatricians are taught is untreatable.

In the early 1990's, a mother in California, Cindy Goldenberg, was the first Mom to cure her son of regressive autism by listening to her mother's instincts and doing her own research into vaccine-induced neuroimmune dysfunction. Her son experienced regressive autism after receiving MMR vaccine. Cindy sought out IVIG therapy as well as nutritional and probiotic therapies that she said "healed his gut." Her son was soon in a regular classroom and this year he graduated from high school.

Bravo, Oprah. You allowed Jenny to tell it like it is. You have helped millions of Moms across America understand what happened to their children, who changed physically, mentally and emotionally after getting vaccinated, and now suffer with autism and other kinds of vaccine-induced brain and immune system dysfunction such as learning disabilities, ADHD, seizure disorders, asthma, and diabetes.

If your child stopped speaking, wouldn't look you in the eye and completely ignored the world around them, what would you do? In her new book, Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism, actress Jenny McCarthy shares her emotional story of diagnosis, hope, faith and recovery-a journey many thousands of parents now face.